


Two Become One

by LeesaPerrie



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-06-06
Updated: 2007-06-06
Packaged: 2018-12-17 17:41:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11856462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LeesaPerrie/pseuds/LeesaPerrie
Summary: Set after 'McKay and Mrs Miller'. Rodney is glad when Rod goes home, but the nightmares are back...





	Two Become One

**Two Become One  
By Leesa Perrie**

Having Rod about had been hard. It certainly didn't help that his alternate self was so... friendly. So _nice_ ; nauseatingly so. Or that his team, his sister even, seemed to prefer Rod to him, at least at first.

No, it didn't help matters that Rod was so well liked, and Rodney admitted freely to himself that, as much as he could, he'd avoided his doppelganger. 

He knew people thought it was petty of him, mean even, but he didn't like the guy, and seeing him brought back memories he didn't want to deal with. Nightmares that had been deeply buried returned, as fresh as the first time he'd dreamt them.

Of course, nor did it help to walk in on a conversation between Jeannie and Rod about, well, about _that_. The one thing that he didn't want to discuss. 

The last thing he needed to know was that in Rod's apparently wonderful universe the event that haunted him hadn't happened; that a certain person might still be alive.

It seemed, however, that although things _were_ different in Rod's universe, the one who haunted Rodney's dreams had in fact died; and that he might actually be the luckier one this time. Though that depended on your point of view, of course.

Rod was only three when Eddie died, and he hardly remembered him. Perhaps that was better, perhaps it was worse. Rodney thought it was probably worse overall, though only just. He was glad he'd had longer to know Eddie than Rod had, even though the pain of losing him was more intense, more painful for those extra years.

In Rod's universe, Eddie had fallen from a hotel balcony, in Rodney's he'd been stabbed by a mugger at the age of thirteen. The mugger had held them both up one evening, and Eddie had tried to fight back. Stupid and brave; all it had done was leave Rodney desperately trying to staunch the blood whilst shouting for help.

By the time help came, Selwyn Edwin McKay, his brother, his identical twin, had died in his arms.

He'd been devastated, inconsolable, and plagued by nightmares; if only he'd been the one to fight back, or had been able to stop his brother from doing so; if only he'd been able to stop the bleeding; if only he'd shouted more loudly and help had come quicker; if only they hadn't been on their way home from the library, where Eddie had come to find him and drag him home for dinner.

Jeannie had been devastated as well, his parents too, but somehow he'd not seen it; blinded by his own pain as he was. It had driven the final wedge between his parents and him. They'd always loved Eddie a little bit more than him, like they did Jeannie, and he knew they had wished he was the one that had died. They never said it outright, but he knew; he could see it in their faces; it was there in their actions.

For a long time he'd wished it _had_ been him. It would have made them happier, and he wouldn't have had to live with the self-destroying pain. It had been years before he could look in a mirror and not flinch at his reflection; the memories plaguing him.

And now, here was a man who looked just like him, and therefore just like Eddie. A man who brought back all the wondering of who and what and where his brother would be now, if he'd lived. Would he be a scientist? Eddie had possessed a passion for chemistry that rivalled his own for physics, so surely that was a yes. Would he be part of the stargate program? Here on Atlantis even? His brother had certainly been almost as intelligent as himself, so probably that too. 

But it was pointless to wonder. Pointless and painful.

He was beyond relived when Rod went home and things started to settle back to normal.

Though it would be a long time before the nightmares settled, if the past was anything to go by.

They would though, eventually. They always did.

Until something else stirred them up again.

The End


End file.
